Woman Sentenced To Nearly 22 Years In Prison For Mailing Ricin Poison To Trump

A 56-year-old woman who sent letters containing ricin poison to then-President Donald Trump and eight Texas law enforcement officials in 2020 has been sentenced to nearly 22 years in federal prison.

Pascale Cecile Veronique Ferrier, a dual citizen of Canada and France, was sentenced Thursday in Washington, D.C., after pleading guilty in January to charges in two separate cases concerning biological weapons.

Ferrier reportedly expressed no remorse for her actions at her sentencing hearing and argued that her homemade ricin wasn’t lethal enough to kill.

Canadian police investigators exit a residential building in Quebec that was related to a probe into ricin-filled envelopes sent to the White House and to Texas officials in 2020.

“It was just a strong warning. I did not target innocent people,” she said, according to NBC News. Her “only regret” was that the threatening letter to Trump did not stop him from seeking reelection, she added.

Ferrier confessed to making ricin, a poison derived from castor beans, at her home in Quebec in September of 2020 and then mailing the powder to Trump and the Texas law enforcement officials with letters threatening violence.

Ferrier suspected that the Texas officials were connected to a roughly 10-week detention she experienced in the state in the spring of 2019 for weapons possession, authorities said.

In her multiple letters, Ferrier wrote that if the “special gift” she enclosed didn’t “work,” she would find a better recipe or make a trip with her gun, according to court documents.

Ferrier also took to social media to ask that someone “please shoot [Trump] ... in the face,” authorities said.

A few days after mailing the letter to Trump — which was intercepted by Secret Service officials — she was stopped by border patrol officers while driving from Canada to Buffalo, New York, and arrested.

Authorities said she had with her a loaded firearm, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and other weapons. She made statements to the officers of “being wanted by the FBI for the ricin letters,” according to court documents.

Her public defender had argued for the 262-month sentence, which includes a life sentence of supervised release and eventual deportation. The lawyer told the judge back in May that the grandmother and former software developer had no prior criminal record and that the sentence would give her hope of “surviving prison and seeing her grandchildren.”